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Confident PC
Blinded by negligence |
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62 years for justice!
Knowledge is at bay
Let it be
Fear stalks streets of Kandahar
Bumps ahead for car makers
Inside Pakistan Pakistan’s N-doctrine
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Confident PC
FINANCE Minister P. Chidambaram is confidence personified. He is certain that the Indian economy will be able to weather the US meltdown that has hit almost all countries in one way or another. As far as India is concerned, he feels, the crisis is almost over and the country will be able to achieve a commendable growth rate of 9 per cent. His assumptions are mainly on two grounds. The economy is robust enough to withstand the pressures of recession some Western countries are already experiencing. The home market is large enough to absorb high industrial production and it is not overtly dependent on exports. As inflation has more or less been controlled, the RBI will be able to reduce the borrowing cost which will help increase the growth rate. All this is music to the ears of those who feel despondent. Mr Chidambaram definitely has a point when he says what India is facing is a slowdown, not recession. The situation in India may not conform to the parameters of recession but there can be no denying that it is already experiencing recessionary trends. Reports from ports — land, sea and air — suggest that exports have been badly hit. Garment exporters, for instance, are no longer getting orders. Airline industry is not the only one that has suffered and has resorted to cost-cutting measures. Pink slips are increasingly given to the employees, who are so scared of losing jobs that they do not even avail of company-paid holidays, as a report suggests. In a stiff e-mail to his staff, Mr Ratan Tata has asked them to undertake “a critical review of their cash-flow requirements and business plans”. The steep fall in the value of the rupee vis-à-vis the dollar is another factor the business community has to reconcile themselves to. On the plus side, while banks in the West are in turmoil, Indian banks have shown remarkable resilience thanks mainly to the control the Reserve Bank has been exercising on them. The central bank has also paid a major role in controlling inflation, helped in the main by the drastic fall in the prices of crude oil. There is now a case for reducing the prices of petroleum products to make an impact on the prices of goods and services. The decision of the airlines to reduce fares is a welcome step in this direction. However, more needs to be done before the common man, too, can be as confident as Mr Chidambaram.
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Blinded by negligence
EIGHTEEN elderly persons have lost their eyesight and 38 more are feared to have become blind following cataract surgery at a free eye camp in Rajasthan. This is not the first time that light has gone out of people’s lives at such camps. Recently, a similar incident occurred in Moga. The same story has been repeated at many charitable hospitals and other government-aided medical institutions. Many patients have paid with their sight, for the sheer negligence — often callousness — of the doctors. In Ludhiana a doctor was alleged to have operated with the help of her driver. Often, expired drugs used for the operation lead to infection and the consequent loss of vision. Cataract, which clouds the transparent lens inside the eye, is a major cause of blindness in India. However, it’s reassuring that there has been a considerable decline in blindness due to cataract surgeries. The stitchless, easy-to- perform surgery has not only restored the eyesight of millions but has also saved them the botheration of long post-operative care. These types of operation are costly and beyond the means of the poor, who are forced to flock eye operation camps where primitive systems of operation are followed. Instead of getting better eyesight, they OFTEN end up losing their vision. Banning eye camps, as the Rajasthan government has done, is not the solution. The poor in India cannot afford the prohibitive cost of a cataract surgery. In the absence of free medical services, they will remain partially blind. India is committed to Global Vision 2020, the right to sight initiative and must do its utmost to remove avoidable blindness. The government must fix responsibility and have a regulatory mechanism to monitor the camps. The organisers of the camp must undertake their task with greater philanthropic zeal and ensure that such unfortunate incidents do not recur. The medical fraternity, instead of passing the buck to the patients, as it invariably does, ought to pay heed to the Hippocratic oath. An act of omission, on their part, ushers in complete darkness in the lives of those who are already bogged down by advancing years and poverty.
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62 years for justice!
THE TRIBUNE recently carried a report about the 62-year-old journey of a civil case. This is a sad commentary on Indian judiciary. Having originated in a sub-court at Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu in 1946, it travelled through several courts. This long journey for a suit that dealt with a minor issue is totally inexplicable. Surely, the delay could have been avoided if the courts — and the advocates — viewed the case from a human angle. It would be unfair to blame one particular court or judge for the malaise. But clearly, it was not handled properly right from the day it was filed in the Coimbatore court. It is always the poor litigants who face the brunt of slow dispensation of justice. For the rich, it matters less whether the case is disposed of expeditiously or not. What is the purpose of the judicial process if one does not have the guarantee of getting justice even in one’s lifetime? Perhaps, in no other country do the wheels of justice move as slowly as in India. To be fair, though the first decree in this case came in October 1947, innumerable appeals in the Madras High Court challenging the decree contributed to the delay. The Supreme Court, too, cannot be absolved of the blame, because it remitted the matter back to the Coimbatore court in November 1986, i.e., 42 years after the suit was filed! It is time effective measures were taken to speed up justice. Otherwise, people will lose faith in the judiciary. The plurality of appeals, the frequency and dilatory revisions and reviews can be avoided if the system is trimmed and there is an attitudinal change among all the stakeholders — judges, advocates and litigants. The Centre and the states should take a serious view of the entire legal system and implement the recommendations made by the Law Commission and the Malimath Committee for tackling the problem of mounting arrears. There is no use if these reports remain on paper. Sadly, a lot of time has been wasted to resolve a problem that undermines the legitimate rights of the litigants.
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Happy the people whose annals are blank in history-books! — Montesquieu
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Knowledge is at bay
If we exult about our strengths overtly, we are prone to ignore our weaknesses. That is what is happening in the education sector. Just because we have those millions of computer professionals, consultants, managers and doctors making it big all over the world, we are inured to the huge deficiencies in our higher education. We aim to emerge as a great technological powerhouse on the wings of a knowledge-driven economy. That dream can come true only if we deal in innovative ideas, instead of treading the beaten track. For that, a pre-requisite is pure research. That, unfortunately, is sadly lacking. Indian higher education has somehow got geared lately to cater to utilitarian, technical disciplines. Not only are other countries overtaking us, we are also not able to match our past performances. Innovative thinking and creativity are becoming rarer. Frontline research of the kind done by stalwarts like C V Raman, J. C. Bose, Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar, H. J. Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai is scarce. The irony is that when somebody shows us the mirror, as has been done recently by National Knowledge Commission (NKC) Chairman Sam Pitroda, we take it as an affront and prefer to call the reflection distorted. What he and other prominent personalities associated with Indian academia like MGK Menon say about the decline in India’s higher education system should be treated as a valuable feedback and galvanise us into removing our shortcomings. Actually, R and D is a neglected baby, with less than 1 per cent of the graduates opting for doctoral studies and a large number of students preferring to go abroad. Small wonder that India filed only 686 applications last year to secure international patents, whereas China filed as many as 5,456. The gap is glaring. As the Knowledge Commission has pointed out, there is a severe shortage of well-trained young men and women with doctorates to fill in the existing posts in research institutes and universities. “This problem is likely to be even more acute in the envisaged elite new universities”, Sam Pitroda has predicted in a letter to the Prime Minister. India has 112 researchers per million inhabitants, as compared to 633 in China and 4,374 in the US. The number of doctorate degree holders in India grew by 20 per cent between 1991 and 2001 as against 85 per cent in China. If some Indian professionals have still made their mark on the global stage, it is more because of their personal brilliance and dedication, as well as the support they got from foreign institutions, rather than the environment that was provided to them. Mind you, we don’t need just engineers and doctors and computer professionals. Equally important is research and purely academic disciplines like physics, mathematics and social sciences. The dice is heavily loaded against anyone opting for pure research. He will have to be ready to work on low emoluments and suffer the lack of facilities. The most committed may stay on but many more would be lured by other streams which offer more money at a very young age than science and research. A select few may not be sensitive to the salary they draw, but there is a huge majority to which remunerations do matter. We are keeping them out of the loop by ignoring academic disciplines. There has been a systematic neglect of higher education over the years. But then, the condition of education in general is no better. The urgently needed allocation of 6 per cent of the GDP for education has remained a pipedream. Actually, education gets only about half of it. With greater focus on primary education, higher education is sidelined. India is to create eight new IITs, seven IIMs, 16 central universities, 14 world-class universities and five new Indian institutes of science education and research. This expansion will improve things only if these institutions can be kept free from the maladies that infect most of the existing universities. At the same time, the existing universities, too, have to be put to the optimum use. What a pity that even the basic task of “teachers teaching and students studying” is not taking place adequately. There is no incentive for worthwhile research. The problem arises with the politicians trying to exercise vice-like control, which kills the academic atmosphere. Vice-Chancellors are appointed and removed on the whims and fancies of the powers that be. Those who owe their job to a politician are bound to be at his beck and call. His pusillanimity opens the door for interference by politicians and bureaucrats in the entire functioning of the universities. Even the students are highly polarised according to their political affiliations. All that paves the way for mediocrity. Whatever the social and political advantages of reservations may be, it is certainly not conducive to promotion of meritocracy. If the Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh has its way, the same trend will continue in the central universities as well, with caste and religion being dragged into every pore of the educational system. Foolproof methods have to be devised to make sure that nobody can buy admission to a higher educational institute. Nor should there be any scope of cheating during a test or falsifying the research data. A vigorous industry-academia interaction should be the order of the day. Incidentally, the Chinese experience is that a large research-intensive new university costs $700 million to build and needs an annual budget of nearly $400 million. How India manages to set them up with barely 10 per cent of the funding will be interesting to watch. If this is to be done by lowering academic standards and quality of education, then calling them world universities will be a misnomer. India needs to spend liberally on R and D. The infusion of private funding into universities has been blocked at every step by hidebound babus who just cannot think out of the box. Nearly 1,300 private universities have emerged in China. No such luck in India, where setting up a university requires an Act of Parliament. It is not just a question of opening up a new university but also ensuring that it conforms to international standards. We, on the other hand, have allowed virtual teaching shops to mushroom here and there. The assessment of quality of education in universities and colleges is faulty. Out of the 327 universities in India, 56 per cent had not been assessed till March, 2007, by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council set up in 1994. Nor can universities function in isolation. When the schools and colleges which comprise the catchment area are in a mess, the universities cannot be expected to be islands of excellence. Even the education for all is a distant goal. When girl students in their thousands leave school system midway because there are no toilet facilities for them, something is fundamentally wrong in the planning. India has 550 million people below the age of 25. This great asset has never been utilised to its full potential. That is a crying shame for a country wanting to emerge as a major economic power in the 21st century.
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Let it be Whatever will be, will be. The future is not ours to see…. Que sera sera. Most of us grow up humming this song. Or soaking into the philosophy of its Indian equivalent stated so powerfully in the Bhagwad Gita — only karma is in your control, rest all follows a preordained course. Yet, incredibly overpowering is the human desire to peep into one’s future. Rather, early on in life, we instinctively learn to thrust our palms right under the scrutinising eyes of anyone and everyone who claims to have even a fleeting knowledge of palmistry or astrology. Gnawed by simple queries — will I be pretty, will I be rich — we pour over birthday forecasts, janam kundlis and what not. As we browse through tomes on future guides — zodiac signs, numerology — looking for the key to our future, we find some answers. Most question marks, however, remain. Then in our moments of misery, we run helter skelter straight into the comfort zone, we hope, the prophecies of astrologers would provide. Now this is no debate for or against astrology. For all we know it could be sheer humbug, mere play of conjectures, which like many coincidences of life, at times, turns true. Or, perhaps it’s a scientific discipline worthy of interrogation and investigation. But, why do we the ordinary mortals let our lives be dictated by its uncertainty or even certainty? More so when the entire astrological fraternity universally proclaims — only Brahma the creator can change your destiny. A few months ago my dearest mother lay in super- specialty care, battling between life and death. As I oscillated between despair and hope, predictably I set about seeking the soothsayer’s advice. Not one, but several. Today, as I look back, I stand a very guilty daughter. Of what use were the negative pronouncements of the astrologers? Except that we pronounced her dead even when she was breathing and alive. A looming ‘if’ now pervades my conscious and conscience. Wasn’t it my down and out frame of mind that stopped me from trying harder? Had they stated otherwise, perhaps I would have left no stone unturned. Didn’t the damning astrological forecasts push me into the fatalistic quagmire where I not only accepted but also bowed before the inevitable? By letting my heart believe them, did I not overrule and forsake the power of positive energy? I have no answers, only remorse coupled with an aching realisation — we are here to grapple with the present. Only present, howsoever daunting, belongs to us and that alone we can and must confront as well as challenge. For future will always be Que sera
sera….
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Fear stalks streets of Kandahar
There is a little girl in the Meir Wais hospital with livid scars and dead skin across her face, an obscene map of brown and pink tissue. Then there is another girl, a beautiful child, Khorea Horay, grimacing in pain, her leg amputated, her life destroyed after her foot was torn to pieces. In another ward, two girls lie on their backs, a tent above their limbs. One has lost an arm, another – a 16-year-old – a leg. Then there is the grim young man with the beard, also in the darkest pain, who looks at me with suspicion and puzzlement. He has a bullet wound in the abdomen, a great incision sutured up after the doctors found it infected. Two other young men, also bearded, cowled in brown “patu” shawls, sit beside this suffering warrior. They, too, stare at me as if I am a visitor from Mars. Perhaps that’s what I am in Kandahar. Better to be a Martian than a Westerner in a city which in all but name has fallen to the Taliban. The black turbans are everywhere. So are the blue burkhas which we Westerners confidently – stupidly – believed would vanish from Afghan society. But the Taliban insist they were not responsible for throwing acid in the face of the little girl in the second-floor ward at Meir Wais hospital. You know what she is thinking. You know what her parents are thinking. Who will marry this girl now, with her patchwork face of pain? Four men on a motorcycle threw acid at her and 13 of her friends on their way to school. Four were brought here, two dispatched immediately to the eye department. The Taliban deny any involvement. But they would, wouldn’t they? Khorea Horay is a victim of that other tormentor of southern Afghanistan, the forces of Western “civilisation” who dispense “collateral damage” to the poor and the illiterate of Kandahar province in their determination to bring “freedom” and “democracy” to the land that defeated both Alexander the Great and Ghengis Khan. The Americans air-raided her village of Shahrwali Kut in their battle against “terrorism”; a Taliban on a nearby hilltop appears to have fired a missile at Nato troops before our Western technology arrived to crush Khorea’s village. “I looked downwards and my foot was in little pieces,” she said. “They came from the sky and from the ground. It started in the afternoon and went on into the night.” In all, 36 members of a wedding party were killed in Shahrwali Kut on 5 November. That’s why she is one of the lucky ones. But luck is relative. Nato forces in southern Afghanistan have promised an inquiry. Needless to say, not a single Western soldier has visited Khorea’s hospital ward to say sorry, even to offer a little compassion. The two girls with amputations are very definitely victims of the Taliban. They were walking in the very centre of Kandahar when a suicide bomber exploded an oil tanker packed with explosives outside the council office which still – theoretically – belongs to the government. The target was Wali Karzai, governor of Kandahar, brother of President Hamid Karzai, a man still desperately denying that he is a local drugs warlord. He escaped. Six died. Of the 45 wounded brought to the Meir Wais hospital, almost all were women and children, many of them crushed by falling walls after the explosion. The doctors lost only one of their patients, a senior police officer, while two bodies were brought to the hospital morgue, one of them a woman. The
Taliban happily claimed responsibility
for the bomb which tore their own
people apart. But who is “fighting for the people” of Kandahar? To its immense credit, the International Committee of the Red Cross is donating £1m a year to the Meir Wais hospital and 11 of its international staff are – incredibly – working full-time in Kandahar. Every other NGO has fled the Taliban city but the ICRC – in contact with “all parties”, as the ubiquitous codicil goes – are dispensing medicines, surgical help and courage. They come from Switzerland, France, Ivory Coast, Hungary, New Zealand, Australia and other nations – and walk a tightrope in this terribly dangerous city. Anyone who still chastises the ICRC for its pusillanimous role in confronting the Nazi Holocaust of the Second World War should meet the brave men and women who work here. And it is all too clear what is wrong with many of these children. They are dying of hunger. There is a mini-famine in the desolation of the deserts of Kandahar and Helmand. Malnutrition here is a kind of disease. So is fear. Across Kandahar, there is great anger. At the government’s corruption, at the Nato occupation and their killings. Little is said of the Taliban. But who condemns those who are winning the war? Barack Obama wants to send 7,000 more American troops to this disaster zone. Does he have the slightest idea what is going on in Afghanistan? For if he did, he would send 7,000 doctors. — By arrangement with
The Independent
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Bumps ahead for car makers The Big Three car makers received no bailout money from Congress last week. If the same thing happens again in two weeks, when they return with concrete plans to spend the $25 billion they’re requesting, General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler will be forced to make hard decisions about how to stay solvent. After a year marked by continuous cost-cutting, precious few options remain for the cash-hungry carmakers. With credit tight, they can’t borrow money. Would-be car buyers are having trouble getting loans and consumer confidence is low, so selling a lot of autos isn’t very likely. Offloading big assets to raise cash is also problematic because potential buyers — such as foreign car makers — are being conservative and might have a hard time financing purchases. Laying off more workers also could be problematic because of the costs associated with downsizing. Some analysts warn that bankruptcy could be the only option. “I do believe the Detroit three will be insolvent within 12 months (unless they receive government cash),” said Sean McAlinden, chief economist at the Center for Automotive Research. GM has laid off about 30,000 workers this year; Ford has reduced its U.S. workforce by more than half since 2003. Between them, they’ve shuttered or temporarily idled more than a dozen plants this year. Chrysler has performed perhaps the most drastic surgery of late, cutting one-quarter of its white-collar workforce and closing the Delaware facility that was to make its first hybrid models. As executives prepare the business plans Congress requested by Dec. 2, they’re breaking out their knives again. GM said Friday it was cutting production at five U.S. plants and extending holiday shutdowns into the second week of January. Ford announced extended shutdowns at several plants, while Chrysler awaits responses to the most recent buyout offers it extended to 14,000 white-collar employees. Meanwhile, in an effort to curry favor with lawmakers, GM and Ford announced plans to reduce their fleets of private jets, which drew scathing comments at the recent hearings. One much-discussed option has been consolidation. “We have been restructuring for the last few years,” Mark Fields, Ford’s top executive in the Americas, said at the Los Angeles Auto Show last week. “Now we’re going to have to continue to restructure the business.” Still, Ford dismissed a merger entreaty from GM this autumn, and subsequent talks between GM and Chrysler, and between Chrysler and Renault-Nissan, went nowhere. Assets are on the table, but there are few willing buyers. GM has been attempting to sell its Hummer brand since June and recently put its AC Delco aftermarket parts operation and a plant in France on the block. No serious bidders have emerged. The companies still hold a few potentially salable assets, however. Ford could put Volvo on the block, GM could sell its high-end Saab brand and Chrysler’s Jeep brand still has some cachet. — By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post
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Inside Pakistan Few commentators in Pakistan appear to be sure about the reported disbanding of the controversial political wing of the ISI. After all, the so-called disclosure has been made by Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and that, too, while addressing a gathering at Multan. But if it is true they are ready to welcome it. An earlier such attempt by the PPP-led government had to be abandoned under pressure from the Pakistan Army. However, the official explanation given was that there was some “misunderstanding” over the drafting of the notification. This is precisely the reason why there are doubts in various quarters about the latest development. It will be more interesting if the demise of the ISI’s political arm really comes about during the regime of the PPP, the party founded by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, known for having given official sanction to the agency’s hated wing. Reports say that the change in the ISI has the approval of President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. But has it been okayed by Army Chief Gen Ashfaque Pervaiz Kiyani too? The question remains unanswered. General Kiyani’s consent is being presumed because of his drive to keep the Army away from politics. The Daily Times asked in its editorial, “But has this really happened? … We are not convinced.” The paper then added, “After General Zia had given the ISI its orientation, it became difficult for succeeding civilian governments to control its officers.” In a terse comment, The Dawn said: “Taken at face value, this is a commendable step in the right direction. The Inter-Services Intelligence clearly has no business meddling in politics and the democratic process. But that is precisely what the ISI has done, with varying degrees of success, since the creation of Pakistan. “It is said that Gen Ayub used the agency for purposes other than keeping tabs on external foes while Gen Yahya relied on it to monitor opposition forces in the former East Pakistan. But it wasn’t until the iron rule of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and his Pakistan People’s Party that the ISI’s ‘political wing’ became an official entity. Under Mr Bhutto, the ISI and the dreaded Federal Security Force were used to target political opponents in clear contravention of the government’s democratic mandate.” The paper pointed out, “Needless to say, the army’s divorce from politics must be genuine, complete and sustainable. Pulling army officers out of government jobs and officially dismantling the ISI’s political wing will be meaningless if meddling continues through unofficial channels. ” Terrorism, though a creation of its own past policies, has emerged as the most serious concern for Pakistan today. That may be one reason why the ISI has been asked to concentrate on this threat to Pakistan’s stability. As The News commented, “…we have to acknowledge that we (Pakistan) have never needed an effective counter-terrorism and intelligence agency more than we do today. An agency distanced from the world of politics. The disbandment of the ISI’s political wing and the reassigning of its staff to ‘other duties’ may be seen as a normalising process, a realigning of priorities and a more appropriate use of resources – but we would be wrong to assume that the ISI is ever going to take its eye off the political ball.” The observation is understandable keeping in view the history of Pakistan. Pakistan’s N-doctrine President Asif Ali Zardari’s reference to Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine in the course of his video-address to the Hindustan Times Leadership Conference has led to a heated debate on the subject. The Nation found his observations “interesting”. It said “peace-loving people across the India-Pakistan divide would whole-heartedly support” some of his views while others “would raise many an eyebrow”. When Mr Zardari talked of being “in a position to turn South Asia into a nuclear-weapons-free zone”, he had nothing new to offer. He restated the old Pakistani line of a “nuclear-free zone in South Asia”. The Frontier Post, a respected Left-leaning daily, says, “But when was it that Pakistan had declared its nuclear prowess was for offensive purposes? It had avowedly acquired this prowess as deterrence, the capability that stood effectively demonstrated during India’s bristling 2002 border standoff. It pulled back, fearing a nuclear conflict.” Surprisingly, the Post criticised India for the bitter history of relations between New Delhi and Islamabad.
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